Research Article
“You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet”: Remembering Production Dynamics, Representational Practices, and Black Representation in Cinema in the Context of the Film The Jazz Singer
Abstract
Since the early years of cinema, those who have a say in production have shaped filmic representations of race, class, culture, gender, and religion according to their own ideological agendas. The elements these representations comprise are not static but can vary, shaped by the period and cultural context in which they are produced. The conditions and context of a film’s production dynamics are therefore crucial to interpreting such representations, as are moments of encounter between a film and its audience. This study evaluates prominent representations in the movie The Jazz Singer (1927), a pioneering film in the field of sound cinema, with attention to the production conditions and sensitivities of its period. The Jazz Singer is a transitional film containing stereotypes about jazz music and race, specifically Blackness, that both drew on and helped influence the daily life and popular culture of its period. The stereotypes it contains are pervasive, from the name of the movie to the poster layout, and touch on themes ranging from nation, race, and ethnicity to identity, gender, and culture. They also draw heavily on the popularity of jazz music. The film’s main character is a white jazz singer who wants to self-actualize himself. While many studies have focused on the “blackface” performances the character uses to advance his career, his transformation over the course of the film as he seeks to achieve his goals is also a culturally embedded process that demands attention. To that end, this study examines how the film’s jazz songs express the problems faced by contemporary Black people, which the study then connects to discussions of cult films representing Black people in the cinema literature. The study also addresses other representational practices in The Jazz Singer from the perspective of cultural studies and cinema.
References
- Altman, Rick. 1996. “The Silence of the Silents.” The Musical Quarterly 80 (4): 657.
- Anderson, Maureen. 2004. “The White Reception of Jazz in America.” African American Review 38 (1): 135-136.
- Benshoff, Harry ve Sean Griffin. 2009. America on Film Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Bordwell, David ve Kristin Thompson. 2008. Film Art an Introduction. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companie.
- Cripps, Thomas. 1993a. Slow Fade to Black. New York: Oxford University Press. Cripps, Thomas. 1993b. Making Movies Black the Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Right Era. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Çetin-Erus, Zeynep. 2007. “Film Endüstrisi ve Dağıtım: 1990 Sonrası Türk Sinemasında Dağıtım Sektörü.” Selçuk İletişim 4 (4): 5-1.
- Diawara, Manthia. 1988. “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance.” Screen 29(4): 66-79.
- Dibbets, Karel. 2008. “Sese Geçiş.” Çeviren Ahmet Fethi. Dünya Sinema Tarihi içinde, editör Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 249-258. İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi.
- Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. 2021. “Siyahların Ruhları.” Cogito: Irkçılığı Görmek (101) 29.
- Durmaz, Birsen. 2022. “Bir Tür Olarak Kara Film ve Caz Müzik: 1950-1959 Yılları Arası Hollywood Kara Filmlerinde Caz Müziğinin Kullanımı.” Doktora tezi, Anadolu Üniversitesi.
- Fanon, Frantz. 2020. Siyah Deri Beyaz Maskeler. Çeviren Orçun Türkay. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.
- Farley, Jeff. 2011. “Jazz as a Black American Art Form: Definitions of the Jazz Preservation Act.” Journal of American Studies 45 (1): 113-129.
- Fisher, Charles. 2016. Jolie the Real Al Jolson Story. Kindle.
- Gabbard, Krin. 2010. “Al Jolson: The Man Who Changed the Movies Forever.” Idols of Modernity Movie Stars of the 1920s içinde, editör Patrice Petro, 210-223. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
- Gallagher, Brian. 1982. “Racist Ideology and Black Abnormality in the Birth of a Nation.” Phylon 43 (1): 68-76.
- Gardner, Bettye J. ve Niani Kilkenny. 2008. “Josephine Baker and Black Culture and Identity in the Jazz Age.” The Journal of African American History 93 (1): 88-93.
- Gubar, Susan. 2000. Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1989. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 9 (2): 68-81.
- Hall, Stuart. 1997. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’.” Representation içinde, editör Stuart Hall, 223-290. Milton Keynes: The Open University.
- Hentoff, Nat. 2010. At the Jazz Band Ball Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
- Hickman, Roger. 2017. Real Music Exploring 100 Years of Film Music. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
- Johnson, E. Patrick. 2003. “Strange Fruit a Performance about Identity Politics.” The Drama Review 47 (2): 88-116.
- Kırel, Serpil. 2018. Kültürel Çalışmalar ve Sinema. İstanbul: İthaki Yayınları.
- Kibler, M. Alison. 2015. Censoring Racial Ridicule Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles over Race and Representation 1890–1930. Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
- Kobel, Peter. 2007. Silent Movies The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture. Boston: Little Brown and Company.
- Konuralp, Sadi. 2004. Film Müziği. İstanbul: Oğlak Yayıncılık ve Reklamcılık.
- Lathbury, Roger. 2018. “Caz Çağı: Bir Dönemin Ruhu.” Caz Çağı Öyküleri içinde. Çeviren Dilara Erdem, 7-12. İstanbul: Vakıfbank Kültür Yayınları.
- Lynskey, Dorian. 2012. “Billie Holiday/ “Strange Fruit”/1939 The Birth of the Popular Protest.” 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day içinde, editör Dorian Lynskey, 3-13. Londra: Faber and Faber.
- MacDonald, Laurence E. 2013. The Invisible Art of Film Music. Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.
- Maltby, Richard. 2023. “Blackface, Disguise and Invisibility in the Reception of The Birth of a Nation.” In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation içinde, editörler Melvyn Stokes ve Paul McEwan, 35-62. İsveç: Palgrave Macmillan.
- McGowan, Todd. 2011. Out of Time Desire in Atemporal Cinema. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
- McGowan, Todd. 2023. Irkçı Fantazi: Nefretin Bilinçdışı Kökleri. Çeviren Erkal Ünal. İstanbul: Axis Yayınları.
- Méndez, Norto. 2019. “Jazz and Blues: Ethnic and racial identity through music” Malmö University.
- Mimaroğlu, K. İlhan. 2013. Caz Sanatı. İstanbul: Pan Yayıncılık.
- Mitchell II, Ernest Julius. 2010. “’Black Renaissance’: A Brief History of the Concept.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 55 (4): 641-665.
- Mouëllic, Gilles. 2013. “Filming Jazz”. Improvising Cinema içinde, editör Gilles Mouëllic, 143-162. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Musser, Charles. 2011. “Why Did Negroes Love Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer?: Melodrama, Blackface and Cosmopolitan Theatrical Culture.” Film History 23 (2): 196-222.
- National Geographic. t.y. “The Plantation System.” Erişim tarihi 12 Temmuz 2023. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/plantation-system/. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2008. “Sessiz Filmlerin Altın Çağı.” Çeviren Ahmet Fethi. Dünya Sinema Tarihi içinde, editör Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 245-248. İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi.
- Osofsky, Gilbert. 1965. “Symbols of the Jazz Age: The New Negro and Harlem Discovered.” American Quarterly 17 (2): 229-238.
- Robb, Brian J. 2013. Sessiz Sinema. Çeviren Eser Ulun. İstanbul: Kalkedon.
- Rogin, Michael. 1992a. “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice.” Critical Inquiry 18 (3): 417-453.
- Rogin, Michael. 1992b. “Making America Home: Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation in the Transition to Talking Pictures.” The Journal of American History 79 (3): 1050-1077.
- Sarris, Andrew. 1977. “The Cultural Guilt of Musical Movies The Jazz Singer.” Film Comment 13 (5): 39-41.
- Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1965. “Black Orpheus”. Çeviren: John MacCombie. The Massachusetts Review 6 (1): 13-52.
- Snead, James. 2016. White Screens Black Images. Londra: Routledge.
- Stokes, Melvyn. 2007. “D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation A History of “The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time”. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Tallmadge, William H. 1955. “What is Jazz?.” Music Educators Journal 42 (1): 31-33.
- Thomson, David. 2017. Warner Bros: The Making of an American Movie. Connecticut: Yale University Press.
- Tonks, Paul. 2006. Film Müziği. Çeviren Ala Sivas. İstanbul: Es Yayınları.
- Ülgen, Çağdaş. 2023 “Blackface Makeup and Mickey Mouse Character in the Context of Racism and Discrimination.” Yedi (30): 123-132.
- Vered, Karen. 2012. “The Jazz Singer: Accounting for Female Agency and Reconsidering Scholarship.” Erişim tarihi 7 Aralık 2023. https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-34-first-release/the-jazz-singer-accounting-for-female-agency-and-reconsidering-scholarship/.
- Whitehead, Kevin. 2020. Play the Way You Feel. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Wierzbicki, James. 2008. Film Music: A History. Londra: Routledge.
- Wierzbicki, James. 2019. “The ‘Silent’ Film in Modern Times.” Music and Sound in Silent Film içinde, editörler Ruth Barton ve Simon Trezise, 198-208. Londra: Routledge.
- Williams, Roland Leander. 2015. Black Male Frames. New York: Syracuse University Press.
- Wipplinger, Jonathan O. 2017. The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
“Henüz Hiçbir Şey Duymadınız”: Caz Şarkıcısı Filmi Bağlamında Üretim Dinamikleri, Temsil Pratikleri ve Siyah Temsilinin Hatırlanması
Abstract
Sinemanın ilk yıllarından itibaren üretimde etkin olan güç odakları ve iktidar dengeleri uyarınca ulus kurgusu, din, ırk, sınıf, kültür, etnisite, kimlik ve cinsiyete dair temsillerin bastırılarak, örtülerek ya da görünür kılınarak oluşturduğu hiyerarşik bir filmsel temsil repertuarı söz konusudur. Temsil düzenlemeleri üretildikleri dönemin gereksinimlerine karşılık gelecek biçimde durağan olmayan, değişkenlik gösterebilen öğelerdir. Kültürel malzeme olan filmlerin üretim dinamiklerinde etkin olan koşullar ve seyircisiyle karşılaşma anları temsile dair yorumlamalarda önem kazanır.
Bu çalışmada sinemada ses öğesinin kullanılmasıyla da öncü bir konuma sahip olan Caz Şarkıcısı (The Jazz Singer) (1927) filminde öne çıkan temsiller dönemin üretim koşulları ve hassasiyetleriyle birlikte değerlendirilecektir. Caz Şarkıcısı, adından afiş düzenlemesine kadar üretildiği dönemin gündelik yaşamını ve popüler kültürünü meşgul eden caz müziğine ve siyah ırka dair çeşitli stereotiplerin sinemada üretilmeye devam edildiği bir geçiş filmidir. Yapım mantığı açısından caz müziğin popülerliğinden yararlanılan filmde; ulus kurgusu, ırk, etnisite, kimlik, cinsiyet ve kültüre dair temsil manevraları dikkat çeker. Anlatının ana karakteri caz şarkıcısı olup kendini gerçekleştirmek isteyen ve siyah olmayan biridir. Dönemin eğlence kültüründe yeri olan “blackface” performansı film aracılığıyla perdeye taşınırken filmdeki ana karakterin amacını gerçekleştirmek için geçirdiği değişimin ortaya konuluşu da yorumlanılması gereken bir kültürel malzeme sunar. Bu nedenle çalışmada siyahların yaşadıkları sorunların dile getirildiği caz şarkılarından sinema literatüründeki siyah temsiline dair kült filmlere de değinilmiştir. Ayrıca çalışma kapsamında Caz Şarkıcısı filmi aracılığıyla filmin anlatısında gündeme getirilen diğer temsil pratikleri dönemin popülerleşmeye çalışan sineması içindeki görünürlükleri kültürel çalışmalar ve sinema bağlamı açısında ortaya konulmuştur.
Keywords
References
- Altman, Rick. 1996. “The Silence of the Silents.” The Musical Quarterly 80 (4): 657.
- Anderson, Maureen. 2004. “The White Reception of Jazz in America.” African American Review 38 (1): 135-136.
- Benshoff, Harry ve Sean Griffin. 2009. America on Film Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Bordwell, David ve Kristin Thompson. 2008. Film Art an Introduction. New York: The McGraw-Hill Companie.
- Cripps, Thomas. 1993a. Slow Fade to Black. New York: Oxford University Press. Cripps, Thomas. 1993b. Making Movies Black the Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Right Era. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Çetin-Erus, Zeynep. 2007. “Film Endüstrisi ve Dağıtım: 1990 Sonrası Türk Sinemasında Dağıtım Sektörü.” Selçuk İletişim 4 (4): 5-1.
- Diawara, Manthia. 1988. “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance.” Screen 29(4): 66-79.
- Dibbets, Karel. 2008. “Sese Geçiş.” Çeviren Ahmet Fethi. Dünya Sinema Tarihi içinde, editör Geoffrey Nowell Smith, 249-258. İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi.
- Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. 2021. “Siyahların Ruhları.” Cogito: Irkçılığı Görmek (101) 29.
- Durmaz, Birsen. 2022. “Bir Tür Olarak Kara Film ve Caz Müzik: 1950-1959 Yılları Arası Hollywood Kara Filmlerinde Caz Müziğinin Kullanımı.” Doktora tezi, Anadolu Üniversitesi.
- Fanon, Frantz. 2020. Siyah Deri Beyaz Maskeler. Çeviren Orçun Türkay. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.
- Farley, Jeff. 2011. “Jazz as a Black American Art Form: Definitions of the Jazz Preservation Act.” Journal of American Studies 45 (1): 113-129.
- Fisher, Charles. 2016. Jolie the Real Al Jolson Story. Kindle.
- Gabbard, Krin. 2010. “Al Jolson: The Man Who Changed the Movies Forever.” Idols of Modernity Movie Stars of the 1920s içinde, editör Patrice Petro, 210-223. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
- Gallagher, Brian. 1982. “Racist Ideology and Black Abnormality in the Birth of a Nation.” Phylon 43 (1): 68-76.
- Gardner, Bettye J. ve Niani Kilkenny. 2008. “Josephine Baker and Black Culture and Identity in the Jazz Age.” The Journal of African American History 93 (1): 88-93.
- Gubar, Susan. 2000. Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Hall, Stuart. 1989. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation.” Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media 9 (2): 68-81.
- Hall, Stuart. 1997. “The Spectacle of the ‘Other’.” Representation içinde, editör Stuart Hall, 223-290. Milton Keynes: The Open University.
- Hentoff, Nat. 2010. At the Jazz Band Ball Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
- Hickman, Roger. 2017. Real Music Exploring 100 Years of Film Music. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.
- Johnson, E. Patrick. 2003. “Strange Fruit a Performance about Identity Politics.” The Drama Review 47 (2): 88-116.
- Kırel, Serpil. 2018. Kültürel Çalışmalar ve Sinema. İstanbul: İthaki Yayınları.
- Kibler, M. Alison. 2015. Censoring Racial Ridicule Irish, Jewish, and African American Struggles over Race and Representation 1890–1930. Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
- Kobel, Peter. 2007. Silent Movies The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture. Boston: Little Brown and Company.
- Konuralp, Sadi. 2004. Film Müziği. İstanbul: Oğlak Yayıncılık ve Reklamcılık.
- Lathbury, Roger. 2018. “Caz Çağı: Bir Dönemin Ruhu.” Caz Çağı Öyküleri içinde. Çeviren Dilara Erdem, 7-12. İstanbul: Vakıfbank Kültür Yayınları.
- Lynskey, Dorian. 2012. “Billie Holiday/ “Strange Fruit”/1939 The Birth of the Popular Protest.” 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day içinde, editör Dorian Lynskey, 3-13. Londra: Faber and Faber.
- MacDonald, Laurence E. 2013. The Invisible Art of Film Music. Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.
- Maltby, Richard. 2023. “Blackface, Disguise and Invisibility in the Reception of The Birth of a Nation.” In the Shadow of The Birth of a Nation içinde, editörler Melvyn Stokes ve Paul McEwan, 35-62. İsveç: Palgrave Macmillan.
- McGowan, Todd. 2011. Out of Time Desire in Atemporal Cinema. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
- McGowan, Todd. 2023. Irkçı Fantazi: Nefretin Bilinçdışı Kökleri. Çeviren Erkal Ünal. İstanbul: Axis Yayınları.
- Méndez, Norto. 2019. “Jazz and Blues: Ethnic and racial identity through music” Malmö University.
- Mimaroğlu, K. İlhan. 2013. Caz Sanatı. İstanbul: Pan Yayıncılık.
- Mitchell II, Ernest Julius. 2010. “’Black Renaissance’: A Brief History of the Concept.” Amerikastudien/American Studies 55 (4): 641-665.
- Mouëllic, Gilles. 2013. “Filming Jazz”. Improvising Cinema içinde, editör Gilles Mouëllic, 143-162. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
- Musser, Charles. 2011. “Why Did Negroes Love Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer?: Melodrama, Blackface and Cosmopolitan Theatrical Culture.” Film History 23 (2): 196-222.
- National Geographic. t.y. “The Plantation System.” Erişim tarihi 12 Temmuz 2023. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/plantation-system/. Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. 2008. “Sessiz Filmlerin Altın Çağı.” Çeviren Ahmet Fethi. Dünya Sinema Tarihi içinde, editör Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, 245-248. İstanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi.
- Osofsky, Gilbert. 1965. “Symbols of the Jazz Age: The New Negro and Harlem Discovered.” American Quarterly 17 (2): 229-238.
- Robb, Brian J. 2013. Sessiz Sinema. Çeviren Eser Ulun. İstanbul: Kalkedon.
- Rogin, Michael. 1992a. “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds His Voice.” Critical Inquiry 18 (3): 417-453.
- Rogin, Michael. 1992b. “Making America Home: Racial Masquerade and Ethnic Assimilation in the Transition to Talking Pictures.” The Journal of American History 79 (3): 1050-1077.
- Sarris, Andrew. 1977. “The Cultural Guilt of Musical Movies The Jazz Singer.” Film Comment 13 (5): 39-41.
- Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1965. “Black Orpheus”. Çeviren: John MacCombie. The Massachusetts Review 6 (1): 13-52.
- Snead, James. 2016. White Screens Black Images. Londra: Routledge.
- Stokes, Melvyn. 2007. “D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation A History of “The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time”. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Tallmadge, William H. 1955. “What is Jazz?.” Music Educators Journal 42 (1): 31-33.
- Thomson, David. 2017. Warner Bros: The Making of an American Movie. Connecticut: Yale University Press.
- Tonks, Paul. 2006. Film Müziği. Çeviren Ala Sivas. İstanbul: Es Yayınları.
- Ülgen, Çağdaş. 2023 “Blackface Makeup and Mickey Mouse Character in the Context of Racism and Discrimination.” Yedi (30): 123-132.
- Vered, Karen. 2012. “The Jazz Singer: Accounting for Female Agency and Reconsidering Scholarship.” Erişim tarihi 7 Aralık 2023. https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-34-first-release/the-jazz-singer-accounting-for-female-agency-and-reconsidering-scholarship/.
- Whitehead, Kevin. 2020. Play the Way You Feel. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Wierzbicki, James. 2008. Film Music: A History. Londra: Routledge.
- Wierzbicki, James. 2019. “The ‘Silent’ Film in Modern Times.” Music and Sound in Silent Film içinde, editörler Ruth Barton ve Simon Trezise, 198-208. Londra: Routledge.
- Williams, Roland Leander. 2015. Black Male Frames. New York: Syracuse University Press.
- Wipplinger, Jonathan O. 2017. The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
There are 56 citations in total.
Details
| Primary Language | Turkish |
|---|---|
| Subjects | Culture, Representation and Identity, Cinema Studies (Other) |
| Journal Section | Articles |
| Authors | |
| Publication Date | May 31, 2024 |
| Submission Date | January 29, 2024 |
| Acceptance Date | April 5, 2024 |
| Published in Issue | Year 2024Volume: 11 Issue: 1 |
